Author: Charlie

Retired American nature-lover, living in Costa Rica, photographing birds and other jewels of nature. This site simply reports on my joys of being RETIRED IN COSTA RICA!
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San Luis Waterfall

San Luis Waterfall, Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, Costa Rica

San Luis Waterfall, Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, Costa Rica
The “Long View”

This was a “by-product” of our Saturday morning birding hike in the cloud forest reserve. Not big, but beautiful as all waterfalls are to me. It was simply on one of our trails with birds around it.

For your own safety, no swimming allowed!
Besides, this is a rainforest preserve for the wildlife. It is their water!  🙂

I have a lot more wildlife photos to share, just still going through them all and selecting a few. 

Today was Spanish class and maid day, so been busy in addition to the photos!  🙂
 “As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing.”    ~John Muir


And someday I’ll do a photo gallery of Tennessee Waterfalls I’ve photographed. Some grand ones there!

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Brown Jay & Elegant Euphonia

Brown Jay
Curi-Cancha Reserva, Monteverde, Costa Rica

Elegant Euphonia Male
Curi-Cancha Reserva, Monteverde, Costa Rica

Elegant Euphonia Female
Curi-Cancha Reserva, Monteverde, Costa Rica

Got home this afternoon and been busy! So only these 3 birds tonight. But I will be adding more over the next week as I find time to go through the hundreds of photos. It was a great trip even with me missing the Sunday morning hike because I did not want to get home late. It is a hard 4.5 hour drive with about 40 km of gravel road that’s a killer for me! And Sunday afternoon traffic into Central Valley is extremely heavy with people returning from the beaches. Next time I go to Monteverde, I will go by bus even if it does take longer. And I will save money! 

Pura Vida!

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Today’s Nature Photos

Blue-crowned Motmot
At the Monteverde Butterfly Garden, Monteverde, Costa Rica

I had narrowed them down to 8 photos to share and the internet connection here just could not handle it, so I will share some butterflies and a sunset vista from my cabin grounds after I am home with more upload ability. I’m in the boonies this weekend! But one thing I can share indirectly. I emailed my photo of an unknown brown, blue & orange butterfly to them. They identified the unusual butterfly using a Costa Rica University book. It is in English a Blue-winged Euyrbia, one of the lycisca butterflies found only between Mexico and Ecuador. So glad of that! Click the linked name above for my photo gallery image of it. Or a very brief article on Wikipedia. 

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Don’t Do This!

Don’t do this while Driving!
But don’t worry. I wasn’t driving. Stopped for construction, motor off!
But this photo did not really show the backed up traffic I was in.

And Don’t Be in a Hurry while in Costa Rica!
After getting around the construction I was anxious to get around
the slow moving cars and big trucks and started passing them . . .

But do you see that double yellow line on that straight stretch of road. I guess it means the authorities don’t want anyone to pass on the mostly two-lane highways like this. So . . . I was one of 6 cars stopped in not a “speed trap” but a “passing trap” by el policia with a very serious lecture in Spanglish about the dangers of passing when there is a yellow line (There’s almost always one) and that if he writes the ticket and it goes to court it will cost me the equivalent of USD $600! But if I promise to drive more safely he will settle for $100 cash. Well, I learned in West Africa to never mention bribery or tangle with a policeman and so folks, I chose $100 over $600 even if what he said may not have been true, I do know that going to court would be a nightmare! 

I took my time the rest of the way, taking 4.5 hours to go 117 km, with one bathroom/snack break and of course the construction break! 🙂  That highway in the photos above is Costa Rica Highway 1, The Pan American Highway, linking all the countries in the three American Continents! 4 lanes would cost too much! And they do keep the pot holes filled with constant construction work AND they are building a partially controlled-acessed 4-lane segment with overpasses through the area’s big city and provincial capital of Guanacaste, Liberia, north of where I turned off for Monteverde. 
Then off Highway 1 to Monteverde was uphill all the way and about half a narrow gravel road with one lane bridges over the streams. Reminds me of Arkansas in the 1940’s and 50’s! “The Good Ol’ Days!” Remember? So I learn another lesson the hard way! Slow Down!
Now I thought Atenas was a country town and it is! But Monteverde is, well, more country! Most of the city streets are dirt or gravel (there’s a difference folks!). But the main drag through town is paved which helps reduce some of the dust. But I like my first night’s lodging, a cabin in a little 8 acre forest with lots of birds and nature. And the butterfly garden and dinner place was good, which I will tell about in a separate post. Tomorrow I move to another set of cabins with the birding club where they did not have room for me tonight. 

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Planning a Weekend Trip

Reserva Monteverde

The Birding Club is going to Monteverde this weekend and I responded early enough to get to be included in the group of only 15 because of limited cabin space available. And as usual, I am going a day early to explore on my own Thursday and Friday before the club activities Friday afternoon until Sunday morning.

You can check out the links to see my plans for my first trip to Monteverde, originally a Friends Community of mostly dairy farmers, thus the cheese capital of Costa Rica in one set of mountains.

THURSDAY

  • I take bus to Alajuela  to get a rent car at San Jose Airport, early. 
  • I drive by my house for bag and camera. Then a 2.5 to 3 hour drive to Monteverde. As my Spanish gets better I will go places like this by bus, usually going through San Jose. But everyone in the club has a car and it usually works better to have rent car, though much more expensive. 
  • Check into Los Pinos Cabinas for my first night only in the edge of a forest preserve and rated internationally as a Sustainable Tourism location. 
  • I have made acquaintance with the owner and director of the Monteverde Butterfly Garden,  so that afternoon I plan to visit it. It is supposedly one of the best in the country. We will see!
FRIDAY
Butterfly Garden at Selvatura Park
  • I plan to spend the morning through lunch at Selvatura Adventure Park which will not includ zip-lining which I’ve already done and once is enough for a 75 year old!  🙂   But I may walk

    the canopy bridge of 2 miles and will see as many of the animal gardens as time allows: Herpetarium & Frogs, Hummingbird Garden, and another Butterfly Garden. Lunch at the park and 20 minutes back to Monteverde and . . . 

  • Check in to Cabanas La Pradera where the birding club has reservations. I plan to look for birds on their property that afternoon and meet club members for brought appetizers before going to dinner. Then we have a . . . 
  • Night Hike  into surrounding 14 hectares of forest belonging to the cabanas for owls, bats, and frogs + who knows what else!  🙂  We have a local guide for that tour. 
SATURDAY
  • 6 AM Breakfast and . . .  
  • Morning hike/birding in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve which I’m expecting to be very good with hopefully some new birds for me!
  • Lunch at Caburé, an Argentine Restaurant and Chocolate Shop. 
  • Afternoon birding at Curi Cancha, a private reserve near the public Cloud Forest Reserve seen in the morning with usually different birds we are told. This will be a full day of birding in some different mountains than the Talamanca Mountains I have visited three times and I may also get a photo of the Resplendent Quetzal here too! Looking forward to a new place! 
  • Check our birding lists with guides and have evening bocas at Janelle’s house who lives nearby.
SUNDAY
  • Early morning birding around the cabins with one of the authors of our Costa Rica birding guidebook, Bob Dean, before breakfast. 
  • Drive home to dump bags, then to airport to drop off car and back on foot, bus, and taxi!  🙂
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Rufous-naped Wren, God’s Creation!

Rufous-naped Wren in Yellow Bell Tree off my Terrace

Rufous-naped Wren

Rufous-naped Wren with his feathers ruffled – possibly a juvenile

Rufous-naped Wren posing by one of the few lingering flowers

You probably don’t remember that last July 2015 I reported here about one of these inside my house.



My Costa Rica Birds PHOTO GALLERY  or All My Costa Rica Galleries

RAIN IN THE DRY SEASON?
A surprise light shower or sprinkle on this Sunday afternoon, March 6, 2016. It is dry season in the central valley with no rain since October, and this one lasted maybe 10 minutes, getting everything wet, but not soaking my flowers and trees – a reminder that it will start raining again for real in May. And tomorrow night I will continue my every two day watering routine.

If you follow all my adventures you may remember that we had rain stop us from seeing Poas Volcano two weeks ago, but it is at a high altitude, “The Cloud Forest,” that has rain year around as does the coastal lowland rainforest such as Tortuguero where we had a little bit of rain on each of our two nights/3 days there. But the rest of Costa Rica is in the Dry Season until May. Read about the WEATHER in Costa Rica.

Genesis 1:20-23The Message (MSG)

20-23 God spoke: “Swarm, Ocean, with fish and all sea life!
        Birds, fly through the sky over Earth!”
    God created the huge whales,
        all the swarm of life in the waters,
    And every kind and species of flying birds.
        God saw that it was good.
    God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Ocean!
        Birds, reproduce on Earth!”
    It was evening, it was morning—
    Day Five.


Emphasis is mine. ~C.D.

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Zooming In On Blossoms

Plumbago

I think most of my photos have been of the total garden or yard and not each blossom. So here are some close-ups of a sort, zoomed in on with my Canon Rebel and 75-300 zoom lens. Enjoy!

Flame Vine  or Triquitraque
My large Heliconia
There are so many varieties that
I hesitate to identify the species

This large Heliconia has seeds in it that birds eat or they grow to new plants

There are 6 varieties of this small
yellow Heliconia growing in wild
and cultivated. I have two . . .
This is my other small yellow Heliconia
Then this small red Heliconia that is finally blooming again. None open yet.

The almost constantly blooming Red Ginger
here with a fully open bloom and . . .

A Red Ginger bud just opening and growing sideways
I cut all of mine back and so they are just now starting to fill with blooms again.
One of the many colors of Lantanas I have as a border.
They are coming back strong after I cut them to the ground 2 months ago.

Porter Weed for Hummingbirds
I have pink and purple.

A special Costa Rican variety of Petunia that blooms heavy each morning
and then all blooms drop off in the afternoon to none, nada! Every day!
It is kind of like the Morning Glories my landlord has growing on his fence.
They too bloom every morning only. 

The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly.    ~William Wordsworth